A leading German cultural heritage expert on Wednesday charged that Syrian regime troops are looting the ancient city of Palmyra like the Islamic State jihadists who controlled it until March.

Well, except the lack of rashes of looting pits as at Apamea and Dura Europs rather suggests does it not, that ISIS was NOT looting Palmyra to the degree the US propaganda made out.

Archaeologist Hermann Parzinger, head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, was speaking on the eve of a two-day Berlin conference on ways to protect heritage sites in war-ravaged Syria.
Speaking to media, Parzinger said that Syrian troops, when they are off-duty, "are conducting illegal excavations" and "have looted" at the UNESCO World Heritage site.
[...]
Despite the liberation, "we shouldn't act like everything is alright now," said Parzinger, the former head of the German Archaeological Institute.
He said retaking Palmyra was "an important victory for culture," writing earlier in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.
"But this victory has not made Assad and his backers the saviours of cultural heritage," he added.
"Assad's soldiers too plundered the ruins of Palmyra before the IS takeover, and their rockets and grenades indiscriminately pounded the antique columns and walls when this promised even the slightest military advantage."

So, in fact Parzinger is not accusing Assad's squaddies of looting now, but then (which I think most of us agree probably did happen). In fact, as
Michael Press has pointed out, "pretty much all groups involved in Syrian war have engaged in looting and/or destruction of antiquities".

No comments:

About Me

British archaeologist living and working in Warsaw, Poland. Since the early 1990s (or even longer) a primary interest has been research on artefact hunting and collecting and the market in portable antiquities in the international context and their effect on the archaeological record.

Abbreviations used in this blog

"coiney" - a term I use for private collector of dug up ancient coins, particularly a member of the Moneta-L forum or the ACCG

"heap-of-artefacts-on-a-table-collecting" the term rather speaks for itself, an accumulation of loose artefacts with no attempt to link each item with documented origins. Most often used to refer to metal detectorists (ice-cream tubs-full) and ancient coin collectors (Roman coins sold in aggregated bulk lots)